Motley could not bear for the sculpture to remain unfinished.

Derkhan and Yagharek entered. When she saw Lin, Derkhan cried out as Isaac had done. She ran across the room to where Isaac and Lin embraced and put her own arms around the two of them, crying and smiling.

Yagharek paced uneasily towards them.

Isaac was murmuring to Lin, telling her over and over how sorry he was, that he thought she was dead, that he would have come.

Kept me working, beating and…and torturing, taunting me, Lin signed, giddy and exhausted with emotion.

Yagharek was about to speak, but he snapped his head suddenly around.

The tramp of hurried feet was audible in the corridor outside.

Isaac stood, supporting Lin as he came, keeping her enfolded in his embrace. Derkhan moved away from the two of them. She drew her pistols and turned to face the door. Yagharek flattened himself against the wall in the shadow of the sculpture, his whip coiled and ready.

The door burst open and hammered against the wall, sprang back.

Motley stood before them.

He was silhouetted. Isaac saw a twisted outline against the black-painted walls of the corridor. A garden of multifarious limbs, a walking patchwork of organic forms. Isaac’s mouth dropped open in amazement. He realized as he watched the shuffling goat- and bird- and dog-footed creature, as he saw the clutching tentacles and knots of tissue, the composite bones and inverted skin, that Lin’s piece was taken, without fancy, from life.

At the sight of him, Lin went limp with fear and the memory of pain. Isaac felt rage begin to engulf him.

Motley stepped back slightly and turned to face the way he had come.

“Security!” shouted Motley from some unclear mouth. “Get here now!” He stepped back into the room.

“Grimnebulin,” he said. His voice was quick and tense. “You came. Didn’t you get my message? Bit remiss, aren’t you?” Motley stepped into the room and the faint light.

Derkhan fired twice. Her bullets tore through Motley’s armoured skin and patches of fur. He staggered back on multiple legs with a bellow of pain. His cry became a vicious laugh.

“Far too many internal organs to hurt me, you useless slut,” he shouted. Derkhan spat with fury and edged closer to the wall.

Isaac stared at Motley, saw teeth gnashing in a multitude of mouths. The floor shook as people pounded along the corridor outside, racing towards the room.

Men appeared in the doorway behind Motley, waved weapons, waited uncertainly. For a moment Isaac’s stomach pitched: the men had no faces, only smooth skin stretched tight over their skulls. What kind of fucking Remades are these? he thought giddily. Then he caught sight of the mirrors extending backwards from the helmets.

His eyes widened as he realized that these were shaven-headed Remade with their heads turned one hundred and eighty degrees, specially and perfectly adapted to dealing with the slake-moths. They waited now for their boss’s orders, their muscular bodies facing Isaac, their heads turned permanently away.

One of Motley’s limbs-an ugly, segmented and suckered thing-shot out to indicate Lin.

“Finish your godsdamned job, you bugger bitch, or you know what you’ll get!” he shouted, and hobbled towards Lin and Isaac.

With an utterly bestial roar, Isaac pushed Lin to one side. A spray of chymical anguish burst from her. Her hands twisted as she begged him to stay with her, but he was launching himself at Motley in an agony of guilt and fury.

Motley shouted wordlessly, meeting Isaac’s challenge.

There was a sudden loud concussion. An explosion of glass scintillas sprayed across the room, leaving blood and curses.

Isaac froze in the centre of the room. Motley was frozen before him. The ranks of security were fumbling with their weapons, shouting orders at each other. Isaac looked up, into the mirrors before his eyes.

The last slake-moth stood behind him. It was framed in the ragged stubs of the window. Glass still dripped around it like viscous liquid.

Isaac gasped.

It was a huge, a terrifying presence. It stood, half crouched, a little way forward from the wall and the window-hole, various savage limbs clutching the floor. It was massive as a gorilla, a body of terrible solidity and intricate violence.

Its unthinkable wings were wide open. Patterns burst across them like negative fireworks.

Motley had been facing the great beast: his mind was captured. He gazed at the wings with an array of unblinking eyes. Behind him his troops were shouting in agitation, levelling weapons.

Yagharek and Derkhan had been standing with their backs to the wall. Isaac saw them in his mirrors behind the thing. The patterned sides of its wings were hidden from them: they were still with shock, but not in thrall.

Between the slake-moth and Isaac, sprawled on the boards where she had fallen in the ragged cascade of glass, was Lin.

“Lin!” shouted Isaac desperately. “Don’t turn round! Don’t look behind you! Come to me!”

Lin froze at his panicked tone. She saw him reach backwards in an appallingly clumsy gesture, step hesitatingly towards her without turning round.

She crawled slowly, very slowly, towards him.

Behind her, she heard a low, animal noise.

The slake-moth stood, pugnacious and uneasy. It could taste minds all around, moving on all sides, threatening and fearing it.

It was unsettled and nervous, still traumatized by the slaughter of its siblings. One of its spiny tentacles lashed the ground like a tail.

Before it, one mind was captive. But the moth’s wings were spread out wide and yet it had captured only one…? It was confused. It faced the main mass of its enemies, it batted its wings at them hypnotically, trying to pull them under and send their dreams bubbling to the surface.

They remained resistant.

The slake-moth grew panicked.

The security behind Motley shifted in frustration. They tried to push past their boss, but he had frozen at the threshold to the room. His enormous body seemed fixed, his various legs planted hard on the ground. He gazed at the slake-moth wings in an intense trance.

There were five Remade behind him. They were poised. They were equipped specifically to defend against slake-moths, in case of escapes. In addition to small arms, three wielded flamethrowers; one a spray of femtocorrosive acid; one an elyctro-thaumaturgic barb-gun. They could see their quarry. But they could not get past their boss.

Motley’s men tried to aim their weapons around him, but his towering bulk occluded their line of fire. They shouted to each other and tried to devise strategies, but they could not. They gazed into their mirrors, watched the huge, predatory moth under Motley’s arms and limbs, through gaps in his outline. They were cowed by the monstrous sight.

Isaac stretched his arm back, reached for Derkhan.

“Come here, Lin,” he hissed, “and don’t look behind you.”

It was like some terrifying children’s game.

Yagharek and Derkhan shifted quietly, moving towards each other behind the moth. It chittered and looked up at their motion, but it remained more wary of the mass of figures before it, and it did not turn round.

Lin slid fitfully along the floor towards Isaac’s back, his clutching arms. A little way from him, she hesitated. She saw Motley, transfixed as if amazed, gazing past Isaac and over her, captivated by…something.